‘No Place Like House’ Has Satiric Amenities
Reflecting on her own modest but comfortable home, veteran real estate agent Lily Dennis (Barbara Stuart) coos affectionately, “It’ll make a great listing some day.”
So much for sentiment. Yet Lily is practically a goddess of the hearth compared to the new breed of rival agents--not to mention the obsessed clients--who circle an upscale housing market like sharks in David Rambo’s smart and very funny new comedy “There’s No Place Like House,” at the Zephyr Theatre. Drawing on his day job as a real estate agent, Rambo constructs an intricate trio of interdependent deals that becomes a satirical window into home-buying neuroses and shenanigans.
Lily, representing the old guard of agents who at least still pay lip service to principles of integrity and loyalty, is rapidly losing ground to Rick Chang (Charles S. Chun), a hustling Cambodian immigrant who pumps himself up with self-esteem seminar platitudes and speaks a wacky dialect of English culled from pop songs of the 1960s and ‘70s. Another unscrupulous agent (Catherine MacNeal) snares clients with sex, leading to some amusing domestic complications.
Not that their clients are any better. Two potential home buyers--a pair of uptight, status-obsessed yuppies (Christina Carlisi and Dean Howell) and an investment-minded couple on the brink of divorce (Robert Neches and Sheila Shaw)--easily abandon ethics as they vie for the tacky fixer-upper about to be vacated by a boozy, nymphomaniac divorcee (Joy Claussen). As the agents put it when they think (wrongly) they won’t be overheard, “These are Oprah people.” They should be more careful--if one deal unravels, the whole complicated scheme would collapse like dominoes. And sure enough. . . .
Marcia Rodd’s rapid-fire staging and this well-cast ensemble amplify Rambo’s subversive whimsy to belly laugh hilarity--this “House” is one hot property.
* “There’s No Place Like House,” Zephyr Theatre, 7456 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Feb. 16. $15. (213) 660-8587. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.
